Reviews & Analysis

Filter By:

  • The frequency of coherent terahertz waves radiated from a single superconducting emitter can be electronically modulated on a chip with up to 40 GHz bandwidth, paving the way for high-data-rate and ultrafast terahertz wireless communications.

    • Kaveh Delfanazari
    News & Views
  • Brillouin light scattering anisotropy microscopy affords single-shot collection of angle-resolved phonon dispersion, enabling the mapping of mechanical anisotropies in living matter with a frequency resolution of 10 MHz and a spatial resolution of 2 µm.

    • Yogeshwari S. Ambekar
    • Giuliano Scarcelli
    News & Views
  • A photonic equivalent to disclination in crystals has been used to produce orbital angular momentum laser light directly on-chip, ushering in compact and efficient twisted-light lasers.

    • Andrew Forbes
    News & Views
  • Electrical excitation of a perovskite light-emitting diode is shown to contribute to optical gain, a milestone on the path towards a non-epitaxial laser diode.

    • Barry P. Rand
    • Noel C. Giebink
    News & Views
  • The fast response and efficiency of plastic scintillators are severely degraded by the preferential population of slow triplet excited states in luminescence centres, such as in dye molecules. This issue can be solved by hot exciton manipulation, which avoids population of the lowest triplet state.

    • Martin Nikl
    News & Views
  • Nonlinear optical resonators allow the coherent conversion of photons, yet fabrication tolerances limit their wavelength accuracy. Introducing periodic modulation in ring resonators is shown to allow robust and predictable selection of the converted photons.

    • Alfredo De Rossi
    • Sylvain Combrié
    News & Views
  • Acoustic modulation of atmospheric air enables the deflection of laser pulses with a peak power of 20 gigawatts, expanding the acousto-optics toolbox to high-power laser manipulation in ambient air.

    • Günter Steinmeyer
    News & Views
  • One-way light transmission can be realized by embracing, rather than mitigating, thermal effects in carefully engineered metasurfaces.

    • Said Rahimzadeh-Kalaleh Rodriguez
    • Sander A. Mann
    News & Views
  • A coherent microwave-to-optical conversion scheme, previously feasible only under cryogenic environments, has now been expanded to ambient conditions by using Rydberg atoms.

    • Kai-Yu Liao
    • Hui Yan
    • Shi-Liang Zhu
    News & Views
  • Modelling shows how plasma density gradients can be tailored to compress optical pulses in the final stages of laser systems towards exawatt (1018 W) peak powers.

    • Brendan Dromey
    News & Views
  • A large-angle twist between two bilayer graphene films makes a sensitive and broadband infrared–terahertz detector as a result of interlayer screening and a crystal field-induced bandgap.

    • Bingchen Deng
    • Fengnian Xia
    News & Views
  • A scheme for fast, comprehensive characterization of high-dimensional quantum states could aid quantum applications in imaging and information processing.

    • Gregory Kanter
    • Prem Kumar
    News & Views
  • Combining photoacoustic excitation with optomechanics enables the mechanical modes associated with entire microorganisms to be detected, demonstrating that mechanical spectroscopy allows us to identify microorganisms and characterize their life stages.

    • Eduardo Gil-Santos
    News & Views